Ages ago there was a priest of Baal who thought himself commissioned by the god to kill all who did not bow the knee to him . All men , terrified by the power and ferocity of the priest, bowed down before the idol and pretended to be his servants ; and the few who refused had to take refuge in hills and deserts. At last a deliverer came and slew the priest and the world had rest. The slayer was blamed by those who placed religion in quietude and put passivity forward as the ideal ethics, but the world looked on him as an incarnation of God.
A certain class of minds shrink from aggressiveness as if it were a sin. Their temperament forbids them to feel the delight of battle and they look on what they cannot understand as something monstrous and sinful. "Heal hate by love, drive out injustice by justice, slay sin by righteousness" is their cry. Love is a sacred name, but it is easier to speak of love than to love. The love which drives out hate, is a divine quality of which only one man in a thousand is capable. A saint full of love for all mankind possesses it, a philanthropist consumed with the desire to heal the miseries of the race possesses it, but the mass of mankind do not and cannot rise to that height. Politics is concerned with masses of mankind and not with individuals. To ask masses of mankind to act as saints, to rise to the height of divine love and practise it in relation to their adversaries or oppressors is to ignore human nature. It is to set a premium on injustice and violence by paralysing the hand of the deliverer when raised to strike. The Gita is the best answer to those who shrink from battle as a sin and aggression as a lowering of morality.
A poet of sweetness and love who has done much to awaken Bengal, has written deprecating the Boycott as an act of hate. The saintliness of spirit which he would see brought into politics is the reflex of his own personality colouring the political ideals of a sattwic race. But in reality the Boycott is not an act of hate. It is an act of self-defence, of aggression for the sake of self-preservation. To call it an act of hate is to say that a man who is being slowly murdered, is not justified in striking out at his murderer. To tell that man
that he must desist from using the first effective weapon that comes to his hand because the blow would be an act of hate, is precisely on a par with this deprecation of boycott. Doubtless the self-defender is not precisely actuated by feelings of holy sweetness towards his assailant, but to expect so much from human nature is impracticable. Certain religions demand it, but they have never been practised to the letter by their followers.
Hinduism recognizes human nature and makes no such impossible demand. It sets one ideal for the saint, another for the man of action, a third for the trader, a fourth for the serf. To prescribe the same ideal for all is to bring about varnasankara, the confusion of duties, and destroy society and the race. If we are content to be serfs, then indeed boycott is a sin for us, not because it is a violation of love, but because it is a violation of the Sudra's duty of obedience and contentment. Politics is the field of the Kshatriya and the morality of the Kshatriya ought to govern our political actions. To impose on politics the Brahminical duty of saintly sufferance, is to preach varnasankara.
Love has a place in politics, but it is the love for one's country, for one's countrymen, for the glory, greatness and happiness of the race, the divine ananda of self-immolation for one's fellows, the ecstasy of relieving their sufferings, the joy of seeing one's blood flow for country and freedom, the bliss of union in death with the fathers of the race. The feeling of almost physical delight in the touch of the mother soil, of the winds that blow from Indian seas, of the rivers that stream from Indian hills, in the sight of Indian surroundings, Indian men, Indian women, Indian children, in the hearing of Indian speech, music, poetry, in the familiar sights, sounds, habits, dress, manners of our Indian life, this is the physical root of that love. The pride in our past, the pain of our present, the passion for the future are its trunk and branches. Self-sacrifice, self-forget-fulness. great service and high endurance for the country are its fruit. And the sap which keeps it alive is the realisation of the Motherhood of God in the country, the vision of the Mother, the knowledge of the Mother, the perpetual contemplation, adoration and service of the Mother.
Other love than this is foreign to the motives of political action. Between nation and nation there is justice, partiality, chivalry.
duty but not love. All love is either individual or for the self in the race or for the self in mankind. It may exist between individuals of different races, but the love of one race for another is a thing foreign to nature. When, therefore, the Boycott as declared by the Indian race against the British is stigmatised for want of love, the charge is bad psychology as well as bad morality. It is interest warring against interest, and hatred is directed not really against the race but against the adverse interest. If the British exploitation were to cease tomorrow, the hatred against the British race would disappear in a moment. A partial adhyaropa makes the ignorant for the moment see in the exploiters and not in the exploitation the receptacle of the hostile feeling. But like all Maya it is an unreal and fleeting sentiment and is not shared by those who think. Not hatred against foreigners, but antipathy to the evils of foreign exploitation is the true root of Boycott.
If hatred is demoralising, it is also stimulating. The web of life has been made a mingled strain of good and evil and God works His ends through the evil as well as through the good. Let us discharge our minds of hate, but let us not deprecate a great and necessary movement because, in the inevitable course of human nature, it has engendered feelings of hostility and hatred. If hatred came, it was necessary that it should come as a stimulus, as a means of awakening. When tamas. inertia, torpor have benumbed a nation, the strongest forms of rajas are necessary to break the spell, and there is no form of rajas so strong as hatred. Through rajas we rise to sattva, and for the Indian temperament, the transition does not take long. Already the element of hatred is giving place to the clear conception of love for the Mother as the spring of our political actions.
Another question is the use of violence in the fartherance of boycott. This is. in our view, purely a matter of policy and expediency. An act of violence brings us into conflict with the law and such a conflict may be inexpedient for a race circumstanced like ours. But the moral question does not arise. The argument that to use violence is to interfere with personal liberty involves a singular misunderstanding of the very nature of politics. The whole of politics is an interference with personal liberty. Law is such an interference, Protection is such an interference, the rule which makes the will of the majority prevail is such an interference. The right to prevent such use of personal liberty as will injure the interests of the race.
is the fundamental law of society. From this point of view the nation is only using its primary right when it restrains the individual from buying or selling foreign goods.
It may be argued that peaceful compulsion is one thing and violent compulsion another. Social boycott may be justifiable, but not the burning or drowning of British goods. The latter method, we reply, is illegal and therefore may be inexpedient, but it is not morally unjustifiable. The morality of the Kshatriya justifies violence in times of war, and Boycott is a war. Nobody blames the Americans for throwing British tea into Boston harbour, nor can anybody blame similar action in India on moral grounds. It is reprehensible from the point of view of law, of social peace and order, not of political morality. It has been eschewed by us because it is unwise and carries the battle on to a ground where we are comparatively weak, from a ground where we are strong. Under other circumstances we might have followed the American precedent, and if we had done so, historians and moralists would have applauded, not censured.
Justice and righteousness are the atmosphere of political morality, but the justice and righteousness of the fighter, not of the priest. Aggression is unjust only when unprovoked, violence unrighteous when used wantonly or for unrighteous ends. It is a barren philosophy which applies a mechanical rule to all actions, or takes a word and tries to fit all human life into it. The sword of the warrior is as necessary to the fulfilment of justice and righteousness as the holiness of the saint. Ramdas is not complete without Shivaji. To maintain justice and prevent the strong from despoiling and the weak from being oppressed is the function for which the Kshatriya was created. Therefore, says Srikrishna in the Mahabharat, God created battle and armour, the sword, the bow and the dagger.
Mankind is of a less terrestrial mould than some would have him to be. He has an element of the divine which the practical politician ignores The practical politician looks to the position at the moment and imagines that he has taken everything into consideration. He has indeed studied the surface and the immediate surroundings, but he has missed what lies beyond material vision. He has left out of account the divine, the incalculable in man, that element which upsets the calculations of the schemer and disconcerts the wisdom of the diplomat
Titans, assembled here, the race supreme on this earthly globe!
A city supreme bejewelled in this sea-girt isle
On a stony crest they shall set up in their own might,
Fearless defying the King of the gods, in disregard of the world.
But listen! What is this rumour
All along the walls surrounding the city of Lanka,
What is this tumult unprecedented in this land?
Is this the roar of a puny army in laughter and jeer,
Dancing over the head of the Mother of Rakshasas. revelling in pride and victory?
But whom do I fear? Why am 1 confined, a prisoner in my own city?
Mute I look at their mad dance, hear their loud boast?
Protected by Varuna in this sea one can never cross,
We warriors enjoyed the wide universe.
A little island has proudly trampled over the whole mankind,
And is the master of it, possessed as its own
The wide earth with her million habitants.
The haughty King of the gods, who names himself
The imperial majesty of the triple worlds,
Is himself imprisoned and works as a slave here today in our Lanka
It is through the might of your arms.
Here are we the same Titans. Here is our city, Lanka.
Is that might of the arms turned limp?
Say, Titans, has that pride lost its brilliance?
Has that power evaporated unnoticed
As we lay courting sleep at night without care?
Who has stolen your blazing might?
Is it Krishna or Mahadeva or any other bold enough
In the still night trembling to enter Lanka while she lay asleep?
Oh! the irony of Fate! the unconquerable race
Is conquered at last in a petty skirmish!
Petty man is victorious in Titan's land!
I could understand if Rudra with his trident rushed in.
His cosmic might teeming with demi-gods and demons
And for days and nights and centuries battled and battered and broke thorough
And at last, Providence aiding, ravaged and destroyed the city of Lanka;
I could also understand if the great Vishnu spread
His net of duplicity, cast his spell of darkness
Upon the intelligence of the Rakshasas and stole away
The Fair Royal Deity of Lanka.
But we are conquered by the arms of Rama,
Men have trampled upon the city of Ravana!
Smile happily, O vanquished gods now in heaven,
There is no fear of punishment for you any more.
Smile, O Indra, in happiness, the lord of the gods is now free from slavery
I do not blame you if you take pride in this victory That should be a shame for you.
Luminous is the city of Heaven, eternal Spring is there,
Enjoy the garden of Paradise there through the mortal's grace.
Ravana, enemy of the gods, is vanquished at the hands of a human being.
Vanquished! Listen! O listen! on the mighty rock afar,
The fierce echo hears and laughs at the word:
It is the daughter of the Mountain in this Isle of Lanka and her thundering voice.
Vanquished! It rends the mind and heart to utter the word.
A Titan's tongue cannot speak it out.
A proud Rakshasa clad in iron-strength, with iron weapons,
Not content with earthly victories I roamed in all the three heavens,
Not content, I assailed the very crest of the triple world.
You say that race is vanquished! A mirage is this truth,
False is this history.
Brothers, friends and sons are killed; in my vast bejewelled halls,
Crowded with slaves and servants I wander all alone
In search of friendly faces but in vain.
The women's quarters are crowded too; there with a dry and desert heart
I look upon mothers who have lost their sons.
In the Assembly Hall, in the battlefield,
In the joyless taverns, in the insipid playfield
My eyes in vain look for the glories of Lanka.
Silent is the lion roar. Into these ears used to be poured
A torrent of delight, the trumpet call of victory,
The wild war-cry, the leonine yell of my brother Kumbhakarna.
But O Aksha, O Indrajit, why are you silent at this hour of peril!
Why does not your ever victorious voice delight our ears any more!
O my children, is the embrace of Death so fast, so sweet!
Pardon me. Titans, for the first time today the earth
Under Ravana's power is wet with Ravana's tears.
But nay, let them be slain, I am yet there.
Shall history write in its pages in iron letters as truth
That the world-conquerors at last were conquered by Rama, the little feeble man!
This dark infamy shall never be written down in the history of the Rakshasas.
Let the world hear of the past history and wonder
And declare that the son of Dasharath enjoyed a momentary victory
Because of the negligence of the Rakshasas.
Now, the wonderful news will spread, unique on earth,
A thing to madden a hero's heart, that sons killed,
Friends killed, killed all the great heroes.
Yet Ravana. the Rakshasa, rises again with a roar.
Leaps mad into battle, and a few of Lanka's men
Kill countless enemies in a few days.
With little effort enthrall again the whole rebel world.
Arise once more, wipe away the memory of grief,
Wipe off from your heart all shadow of sorrows,
Kindle fire of wrath in your blinded eyes.
Forget pity, forget weariness, O heaven-conquering race.
In an iron body, an iron mind and heart befits the race of Rakshasas.
Once more we shall slaughter all and each.
We shall cross the seas and depopulate
The land of birth of the son of Wind-god.
With myriads of prisoners, slaves unnumbered
We shall repopulate to overflowing the isle of Lanka,
Beget in the wombs of the enemy womanhood a new race of children.
But what has gone, let it go
We shall build again, we shall destroy again.
We are not puny human hearts,
Ravana's thirst is not quenched with scanty blood!
The flaming grief dies not in this vast heart
Satisfied with a feeble revenge.
A little enjoyment does not enfeeble the ardour of these senses.
I am a Rakshasa, once more I shall conquer
All the world and enjoy the Infinite itself.
Otherwise rest content, O jackals of Shiva's consort,
Rest content. O you host of vultures
A deathbed for me shall I build up like a hill
With thousands and thousands of human and ape heads.
Or I shall throw into devouring fire, like faggots,
All the rich treasures, things of beauty and art of ancient Lanka
I shall throw down all this peerless grandeur:
This entire great city I shall light up into a titanic funeral pyre.
The three heavens with Earth I have won in battle,
I imprisoned all the gods, I enjoyed fame incomparable;
I am as though the all-enveloping world-eye of the Sun,
I burn at noon of mid-summer; afflicted by its heat
The world adores the scorching Fire.
I shine over the universe, displaying my effulgence.
As the sun reddens the blue of the firmament with its own blood
And goes down at setting in all its glory,
So shall I sink into the sea of Death.
I was at dawn, during my sway, head uplifted,
Fierce and radiant.
And at the setting I will be there still.
In death and destruction unconquerable, a fierce lustre and a mighty blaze.
The mind of a man
And the mind in a stone.
But the Mind of minds
Sits bright and alone.
The life of a tree,
The life in a clod,
To the Life of all life
That men call God.
The heart of a beast
And a seraph's heart,
But the Heart of all hearts
Throbs ever apart.
A body beloved
And a body slain.
Yet both were the bodies
Of One in their pain.
But in their lust of battle shouted loud.
Rejoicing, all the Apes when they beheld
The dreadful Rakshas coming forth to war.
Dhoomraksha. High the din of mellay rose.
Giant and Ape with tree and spear and mace
Smiting each other; for the Giants hewed
Their dire opponents down on every side.
And they too with the trunks of trees bore down
Their monstrous foes and levelled with the dust.
But in their wrath increasing Lanca's hosts
Pierced the invaders; straight their arrows flew
Unswerving, fatal, heron-winged; sharp-knobbed
Their maces smote and dreadful clubs prevailed;
The curious tridents did their work. But torn,
But mangled by the shafts, but pierced with spears
The Apes in act heroic, unalarmed,
Drew boldness from impatience of defeat;
Trees from the earth they plucked, lifted great rocks
And with a dreadful speed, roaring aloud.
Hurling their shouted names behind the blow,
They slew with these the heroes of the isle.
Down fell the Giants crushed and from their mouths
Vomited lifeblood, pounded were by rocks
And with crushed sides collapsed or by ape-teeth
Were mangled, or lay in heaps by trees o'erborne.
Some with sad faces tore their locks in grief,
Bewildered with the smell of blood and death
Some lifeless sank upon the earth. Enraged
Dhoomraksha saw the rout and forward stormed
And made a mighty havoc of the foe,
Crushing to earth their bleeding forms with axe
And javelin and mace oppressed or torn.
Some helpless died, some gave their blood to earth.
Some scattering fled the fierce pursuer's wrath.
Some with torn hearts slept on one side relaxed
On earth's soft bosom, some with entrails plucked
Out of their bodies by the tridents died
Wretchedly. Sweet twanged the bowstrings, lyres of war,
The sobbing of the warriors' breath was time
And with a thunder dull battle delivered
Its dread orchestral music. In the front
Of all that war Dhoomraksha thundered armed,
Laughing aloud, and with fast-sleeting shafts
"Scattered to every wind his foes. At last
The Son of Tempest saw his army's rout
Astonished by Dhoomraksha; wroth he saw
And came, carrying a giant crag he came,
Red-gazing, and with all his father's force
At dire Dhoomraksha's chariot hurled. Alarmed
Dhoomraksha saw the flying boulder come
And rearing up his club from the high car
He leaped. Down crashed the rock and ground the car
To pieces, wheel and flag and pole and yoke
And the forsaken bow. Hanuman too
Abandoning his chariot through the ranks
Opposing strode with havoc; trees unlopped
With all their boughs for mace and club he used.
With shattered heads and bodies oozing blood
The Giants fell before him. Scattering so
The Giant army Hanuman, the Wind's
Tremendous son, took easily in his hands
A mountain's mighty top and ran and strode
Where stood Dhoomraksha. Roaring answer loud
The mighty Giant with his club upreared
Came furiously to meet the advancing foe.
Wrathful the heroes met, and on the head
Of Hanuman the weapon many-spiked
Of dire Dhoomraksha fell; but he the Ape,
Strong in inheritance of might divine.
Not even heeded such a blow, but brought
Right on Dhoomraksha's crown the summit huge
And all his limbs were shattered with the stroke
And like a broken mountain they collapsed
Earthward, o'erwhelmed. in-smitten, prone. The Giants left.
Survivors of that slaughter, fled alarmed
And entered Lanca by the Apes pursued
And butchered as they fled. But from that fight
Victorious, weary, rested Hanuman
Amid his slaughtered foemen and engirt
With the red rivers he had made to flow,
Praised by the host, rejoicing in his wounds.
New Ways in English Literature (Review)
Amid the commonplace, vapid and undiscriminating stuff which mostly does duty for literary criticism in India.here is at last a work of the first order, something in which the soul can take pleasure for the beauty of its style, its perfect measure, its insight, its subtle observation and just appreciation. Such a book would be a miracle in its environment, but the miracle disappears when we know the name of the author; Mr. James Cousins is one of the leading spirits of the Irish movement which has given contemporary English literature its two greatest poets. This book therefore comes to us from Ireland, although it is published in India. One would like to see a significant link in this circumstance of Mr. Cousins' presence and activities among us. For Ireland is a predestined home of the new spiritual illumination rising in Europe from the ashes of the age of rationalism and she has already, in literature at least, found the path of her salvation: India, that ancient home of an imperishable spirituality, has still, Rabindranath and the Bengal school of painting notwithstanding, to find hers, has .yet to create the favourable imaginative, intellectual and aesthetic conditions for her voice to be heard again with the old power, but a renewed message. The atmosphere is at present raw and chill, thick with the crude mists of a false education and a meagre and imitative culture. Mr. Cousins' work is avowedly part of a movement intended to make a salutary change and bring in the large air and light of a living culture and education.
Mr. Cousins deals here with the contemporary and recent English poets, a subject for the most part quite unfamiliar to the Indian mind. He treats it with an admirable sympathy, an illuminating power of phrase and a fine certainty of touch; but for the purpose for which these essays were put together, his criticism has one great fault, there is too little of it. The first part deals with four contemporary poets, three of them of the first importance, and a group; the second deals with five recent poets and a dramatist and of these writers three again are of the first importance; but this slender volume of 132 pages is a small pedestal for so many figures. To catch the eye
of the Indian reader to give the greater of these something like life size, while putting the rest in smaller proportions - after a convention familiar to Indian art. Each essay is indeed excellent in itself; that on Emerson is a masterpiece of fullness in brevity, for it says perfectly in a few pages all that need be said about Emerson the poet and nothing that need not be said; others are quite full and conclusive enough for their purpose, for instance the admirable "defence" of Alfred Austin ; and in all the essential things are said and said finely and tellingly. There is quite enough for the experienced reader of English poetry who can seize on implications and follow out suggestions ; but the Indian reader is inexperienced and has not ordinarily a well-cultivated critical faculty or receptiveness; he needs an ampler treatment to familiarise him with the subject and secure his permanent interest. The essays do act admirably as finger-posts; but finger-posts are not enough for him , he needs to be carried some miles along the road before he will consent to follow it.
A supreme, an absolute of itself, a reaching to an infinite and utmost, a last point of perfection of its own possibilities is that to which all action of Nature intuitively tends in its unconscious formations and when it has arrived to that point it has justified its existence to the spirit which has created it and fulfilled the secret creative will within it. Speech, the expressive Word, has such a summit or absolute, a perfection which is the touch of the infinite upon its finite possibilities and the seal upon it of its Creator. This absolute of the expressive Word can be given the name which was found for it by the inspired singers of the Veda, the Mantra. Poetry especially claimed for its perfected expression in the hymns of the Veda this name. It is [not] confined however to this sense, for it is extended to all speech that has a supreme or an absolute power; the Mantra is the word that carries the godhead in it or the power of the godhead, can bring it into the consciousness and fix there it and its workings, awaken there the thrill of the infinite, the force of something absolute, perpetuate the miracle of the supreme utterance. This highest power of speech and especially of poetic speech is what we have to make here the object of our scrutiny, discover, if we can, its secret, regard the stream of poetry as a long course of the endeavour of human speech to find it and the greater generalisation of its presence and its power as the future sign of an ultimate climbing towards an ultimate evolution as a poetic consciousness towards the conquest of its ultimate summits.
THE FIRST HYMN TO USHA
V. 79
1. Awaken us today, O dawn, to thy vast bliss bearing in thee the light of heaven, even as then didst thou awaken us when the inspiration of the Truth opened wide upon us, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
2. As thou dawnedst once, O daughter of heaven, perfect guide, pure and shining movement, so now dawn, O victorious force, O true inspiration, O wide expanding, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
3. So today dawn on us, O daughter of heaven, bearer of substance as then thou didst dawn, victorious force, true inspiration, wide expanding, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
4. They who uphold thee in the sacrifice and express thee by their affirmations, O wide-shining dawn, they have the utter glory of thy plenitudes, O queen of plenitudes; they hold the gift and hold the delight, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
5. Whatsoever these hosts of thine take pleasure in for the building of the fullness, set they round as their objects of desire, giving us a wealth1 from which there is no deviation into suffering. O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
6. Confirm, O dawn, forceful victory and all plenitudes in the masters of light, who from their plenitudes have heaped on
1 Or, felicity
us undeviating felicities, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
7. [Not translated]
8. Yea. and bring to us luminous impulsions, O daughter of heaven, with the rays of the Sun of Truth that are bright and shine in purity and realise illumination. O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
9. Dawn on us, O daughter of heaven, prolong not for ever pur labour; thou art not afflicted by the light of the Sun of Truth as is the thief of our radiances, as is the enemy of our being, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
10. Even so much and more shouldst thou give to the seeker of knowledge, thou who dawning with thy spacious light on him who affirms thee art not diminished in thy spaces, O thou whose perfect birth is a truth and gladness of the life's coursing.
THE SECOND HYMN TO USHA
V. 80
1. She follows the shining path of light and by the Truth is vast, for she has supreme hold of the Truth; wide is the splendour of her ruddy form. Towards Dawn divine as she comes to them bearing in her that luminous world, souls of the knowledge raise the adoration of their thoughts.
2. Lo where she comes with the vision awakening the creature and she goes in front making his paths easy for his feet; vast is she and all-pervading, vast is her movement and she labours out the Light in the front of the days.
3. Ruddy for the work are the radiances that she yokes to her chariot and unstumbling she makes for us a felicity that shall not pass away from us; divine is she and she hews out our paths for the happy journey, multiply affirmed she gleams laden with all desirable things.
4. All a whiteness she becomes in the two powers of her greatness as she unveils her body before our eyes; she follows the path of the Truth towards our self-perfection and knows all the regions of our travel and circumscribes them not.
5. Lo she manifests knowledge and stands up on the heights for vision bathing her while limbs in lustre. Repelling all discords and all darknesses Dawn the daughter of heaven has come to us with the Light.
6. Lo the daughter of heaven fronts men's souls, happy Dawn and sets their work in movement; and she floods with her desirable things the giver; still is she young who has made the Light again for us even as in the ancient days.
THE FIRST HYMN TO SAVITRI
V. 81
1. They yoke the mind, they yoke the thoughts, illuminates to the Illuminate, to the vast godhead, to the enlightened Consciousness. He is One and knows all things that come into being and sets each in her place all the queens of the sacrifice. Vast is the affirmation of the divine Creator.
2 He is the seer and assumes all forms and he brings into being their happy state for the twofold world and the fourfold. Yea, he manifests all Heaven and in his outshining follows the march of the Dawn.
3. The other gods follow his march and by the force of his energy
they attain to the vastness of the God, the lord of varied lustres who has measured out the earthly worlds by his large might, the godhead creative.
4. And thou travellest, O Manifester of things, to the triple luminousnesses: and thou art expressed wholly by the rays of the Sun of Truth; and thou besiegest the Night from either side; and thou becomest Love, the Harmoniser, O Godhead, by thy laws.
5. And thou art the One who has power to bring forth the world and thou becomest the Increaser, O God, by thy progressions; and thou illuminest wholly all this world. Shyawashwa has attained to the affirmation of thee, O Creator of things.
THE SECOND HYMN TO SAVITRI
V. 82
1. It is that, the food of the divine Creator that we accept into us, even that best enjoyment of the Enjoyer we meditate which most establishes the all in us and brings us to our goal.
2. For whatsoever delight there is of this Forth-bringer of things they cannot diminish it, for it is too self-victorious, nor his self-empire.
3. He is the Forth-bringer and Enjoyer and it is the delights that he brings forth for whosoever gives to him; that varied glory of his enjoyment we desire.
4. Today, O divine Bringer-forth of things, loose forth in us thy fruitful felicity; loose away from us all that is of the evil dream.
5. All evils and stumblings loose away from us, O divine Creator; that loose forth upon us which is the good and the happiness.
6. Blameless for infinite being in the new creation of the divine Creator, we seize with the thought all desirable things.
7. Today we accept into us by the perfect forms of our thought the universal godhead, the master of being, the creator creating the Truth of things,
8. Even he who goes in front of both this day and night with no heedless mind, placing perfectly his creative Thought, the Forth-bringer.
9. He who makes heard in the rhythm of Truth all these births of the universe and so produces them, the Forth-bringer.
HYMN TO PARJANYA
V. 83
1. Let thy speech turn in these Words towards the mighty One, affirm the Master of the Storm and by submission lodge him in all thy being. Shouting aloud the Bull swiftly achieving sets his seed, his child in earth's growths that bear her heats.
2. He smites down her trees; he smites down also the giants of evil; the whole world is in fear of his mighty blow. Even he that is blameless is seized and driven by him in his abundant might, when as the lord of the storm roaring he slays the doers of evil.
3. Like a charioteer with his lash he drives on the steeds. oh. he makes manifest his messengers of the rain. From afar arise his roarings of the lion when the lord of the storm makes his heavens full of the rain.
4. The winds of life blow, the lightnings leap from our heaven, upward are forced the growths of earth, nourished is the light of the luminous svar: for the whole world-impulse of
movement is born when the lord of the storm fosters our earth with his seed.
5. To his law our earth bows down, by his law she bears the galloping hooves of the life powers; by his law the growths of earth's warmths assume all forms; O Master of the storm, achieve for us a vast peace.
6. Oh ye thought-forces set flowing for us your rain of heaven; nourish us, O ye streams of the Horse of Life, the Male of the worlds; downwards in this form of thy thunders come pouring out the Waters; come as the Master of Might and our Father.
7. Shout, roar aloud, plant thy offspring here; storm about with thy car full of the Waters; drag to thee entirely the skin opened wide and turned downward; let the high places and the low be equalled with each other.
8. Raise up thy vast sack of the waters, pour out, let the rivers flow wide-streaming in front of us; flood our earth and heaven with the clarity, let there be free drinking of it for the herds unslayable.
9. When, O Master of Storm, thou shoutest aloud and roaring smitest the doers of evil, all the world rejoices and whatsoever is upon the earth.
10. Thou hast rained thy rains, now catch them upward; thou hast made the desert places easy to be crossed, thou hast produced the growths of earth's heats for our enjoying, yea, thou hast found the thought-mind for thy creatures.
HYMN TO PRITHIVI
V. 84
1. Truly, O Earth, thou bearest here the oppressive weight of
thy mountains and thou rejoicest in thy wide soil leaning down from them in thy vastness, O vast and mighty one.
2. O wide-ranging Earth, our affirmations support thee all about in thy movements, who settest into a gallop thy mighty horse of Life's plenitude that crosses through all to its goal, O white-shining goddess.
3. Though firm-rooted thou supportest thy growths of delight with thy containing power, yet thou doest violence to them in thy energy when the lightnings stream from thy clouded sky, and the abundance of heaven rains down upon thee.
HYMN TO VARUNA
V. 85
1. Cast into the illumining word a soul-thought vast and delightful and profound for the Encompasser, the all-King whose voice is the Truth's inspiration, and he has hewed the veil asunder as one slits open a skin that earth may lie open to the Sun of illumination.
2. He has spread out the vital world supported on our pleasant things and plenitude of their force in the labouring life-powers and their sweet yield in the radiant herds and will in men's hearts and the god-force in the waters of existence and the sun of truth in our mental heaven and the wine of delight on the hill of being.
3. The Encompasser created with downward door the world that holds his embracing knowledge and from that opening he loosed forth heaven of mind and earth of body and this middle vital habitation; from2 that door the king of all this world of our becoming floods wholly this earth as rain sweeps over the crops of a field.
2 Or, by
4. He floods from it the wide earth and the heaven when he the All-Encompasser desires that sweet milk at last. The high summits of our earthly being are clothed then with his cloud and his hero-strengths put forth their might and loosen them from their bases.
5. This is the might of the wisdom I declare to you of the All-Encompasser, the Inspired and Puissant One; for he stands in the middle vital world with the mind as his measuring-rule and he maps out our physical being with the Sun of knowledge.
6. Yea, this is the might of the forming wisdom of the God in his absolute vision and to that might none can do violence, that the ocean of his being is one and all these moving and hastening waters pour into it, yet can they not fill it with their waters.
7. O Wideness, cleave from us all sin that we have done against the law of Aryaman or the rule of Mitra, against comrade or brother or constant fellow or any fighter in this battle.
8. The evil that has been done in us as by treacherous gamesters in the playing, the truth that errs and we would not know it, the roots of all these things loosen and cut them away from us, so shall we be dear to thee, O Lord of Purity.
HYMN TO INDRA AND AGNI
V. 86
1. O god-mind and god-will, the mortal whom ye both increase in the plenitudes breaks through even fixed and strong formations, he becoming the triple soul, forward to the illumined energies and the voices of the heights.
2. Ye twain who are hard to pierce in our battles, you arc all inspiration in our plenitudes, who range in all the live worlds
of our labour, the god-mind and the god-will we call to us.
3. Full of solid might is their shining energy; sharp is the out-flashing light of the lords of plenitude and from the two rays that are their arms it speeds running to its mark as the slayer of the Coverer of the radiant herds.
4. Ye we call, O god-mind and god-will, for the impulsion of your movements, O masters of the ecstasy that breaks through to our goal, gods who have the knowledge and delight in the word.
5. Gods invincible who increase day by day for the mortal, adepts of the work I set in the front, even as I set the two gods of the delight in front for the life-force in me that labours.
6. So for the god-mind and the god-will has been cast a food-offering of force as clarity purified by the pressing-stones of heaven. May ye uphold in the illumined souls that give you expression vast inspiration and felicity, may ye uphold impulsion in them when they give you the word of your expression.
HYMN TO EVAYA MARUT
V. 87
1. Towards the Mighty One with whom are the Thought-powers, towards the All-pervading Deity may your thoughts travel forward; for it is he who is born on the mountain-tops and he is the moving Thought-Force in us, forward to the mighty force with the spiked gauntlets3 that advances in the sacrifice, with a blissful impulse of speed, whose action shakes the world.
2. Ye who are born by the might of him and who are self-born when by knowledge the forcefully moving Thought-God sends
1 Cancelled without substitution in manuscript
forth his word, by his will-power, O ye forces of the Thought, that flashing might of yours cannot be violated; by his effective power and his might that is here in them they become as the mountains to whom none can do violence.
3. Their voices are inspirations from the vast heaven, by its word they shine out and come beautifully into being. [ . . . ]4 the moving Thought-God! Their force of impulsion is not lord in this world of our self-accomplishing, therefore as fires of the God-Will making their own lightning, they rush forward along life's rushing streams.
4. He it was from that vast world, that equal seat that he came forward, the wide-striding Pervader of things, the Thought-God in the force of his movement. When of himself he gave himself to them coming down from his own5 high home in the lower plateaus, they are spurred by a vast emulation, they are possessed of their pervading mightinesses and he moves with his Strong Ones increasing the Bliss.
5. As the puissant sound of you vibrating travels the Bull of the world in his impetuosity and his forceful might, the moving Thought-God, and by Him ye shine out and have overcoming might and are self-brilliant and are fixed in radiances and are golden of the Light, armed, speeding impellently.
6. No shore is there to the ocean of Your might in its increase; may the forcefully moving Thought-God protect that flashing strength, for in your forward march ye are that stand at last in the Vision; so shining out pure as fires of the god-will from that which confines and limits us protect.
7. May they, the violent ones, like fires of the god-will perfect in plenitude, multitudinous in their lustrous strengths, increase us, even the moving Thought-Force, they in whose movements this our earthly seat far-extended and wide widens more
4 One or two illegible words
5 Doubtful reading.
and vast are the forceful mights of them supremely and wonderfully moving.
8. O ye Thought-powers moving for us on the path where hostile division ceases, hear the cry of your adorer, O moving Thought-Power: becoming of one passion with the mighty Pervading Godhead repel from us always by your workings, happy in your charioted movements, all things that hurt and divide.
9. Come to our sacrifice, O god of the sacrifice, so that its achievement shall be perfect, hear our call! and there shall come not to it the giants who devour. Like largest hills in the wide heaven may ye in your conscious knowledge evade the grasp of her who limits and binds.